Lone star or team player?:The interrelationship of different identification foci and the role of self-presentation concerns

Work identity is important in the attraction and retention of staff, yet how the facets of such identity relate remains convoluted and unclear despite this being of interest to both scholars and practitioners. We use structural equation modeling to analyze empirical data from 144 employees in the United Kingdom's oil and gas industry, analyzing the nature and interrelationship of identification as individual-level (career advancement) and social-level (work group and organization) foci, as well as considering the two psychological self-presentation factors (value expression and social adjustment) that direct and drive identification processes. A dichotomy between individual and social components of work identity is found, revealing a strong association between both social-level foci of identification. Moreover, both components of work identity are found to be premised on different psychological factors, furthering our knowledge of the enmeshed nature of identity at work

Continuing the TRC project: the use of internal reconciliation commissions to facilitate organisational transformation - the case of Wits Health Sciences Faculty

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: The TRC; Commissioning the Past, 11-14 June, 199

Ending the war on error: towards an archaeology of failure

Failure is a fundamental part of the human condition. While archaeologists readily identify large-scale failures, such as societal collapse and site abandonment, they less frequently consider the smaller failures of everyday life: the burning of a meal or planning errors during construction. Here, the authors argue that evidence for these smaller failures is abundant in the archaeological record but often ignored or omitted in interpretations. Closer examination of such evidence permits a more nuanced understanding both of the mundane and the larger-scale failures of the human past. Excluding failure from the interpretative toolbox obscures the reconstruction of past lives and is tantamount to denying the humanity of past peoples

Where have all the doctors gone? Career choices of Wits medical graduates

Objectives. To assess the distribution of Universityof the Witwatersrand (Wits) medical graduates from  1960 to 1994 with regard to private or public sector work, chosen specialist or generalist careers, and  work in urban or rural ateas, looking for secular trends and genderdifferences.Design. A crosscsectional analysis of the register of what was then· the South African Medical and •  Dental Council (SAMDC) and a telephone interview survey of a sample of medical graduates, collecting retrospective career histories.Results. Thirty-six per cent of the sample was working predominantly in the public sector, while 47% of all years worked by graduates were in the public sector. Women graduates spent 68% oftheir years working in the public sector, compared with 36% for men. The majority (55%) of graduates in the sample who were working in the public sector cited academic and training aspects as the main reason for this choice. Conversely, nearly half (47%) gave income as the main reasonfor moving to the private sector.  Forty per cent of graduates had.spe.;::ialised .(46%.of men,.22% of women), while 76% were working in the large urban areas.Conclusions .The findings highlight methodological problems with standard cross-sectional analysis of  distribution of personnel. They also challenge several assumptions about the likelihood of Wits graduates working as generalists (60%), the voluntary contribution of graduates to the public sector, and in particular the value of women doctors to public service and primary care

Wealth in Livestock, Wealth in People, and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Jordan

Within archaeology, the value of livestock is usually presented in terms of use values, the calories and products animals provide humans. Yet domestic animals are also sources of wealth that accrue symbolic and social values, tying livestock production to the reproduction of human social relations. Taking a Marxist perspective that recognizes dialectical relations between forms of value, we develop a model based on ethnographic examples in which the cycling between use value and social/symbolic values adhering to wealth in livestock are mobilized for the reproduction of ‘wealth in people’, or the accumulation of rights stemming from relationships between people. This model of cycling between forms of value can be applied to many ethnohistorical agropastoral political economies. We apply it to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B societies (c. 8500–7000 BC) in Jordan. During this time, the mode of production shifted from one grounded in the community to one centered on extended households. We suggest wealth in people was a key asset for LPPNB households and that wealth in livestock served as a major component of, and a particular ‘moment’ within, its reproduction. This might help explain the accelerated pace by which livestock production overtook hunting in the southern Levant in the eighth millennium BC

Wool they, won’t they: Zooarchaeological perspectives on the political and subsistence economies of wool in northern Mesopotamia

An important facet in the study of complex societies involves documenting how the extraction of resources to support political structures (the political economy) impacted the subsistence economy of everyday life. Caprine production was a central feature of ancient Mesopotamian subsistence, while ancient texts reveal that wool was centrally important to the region’s political economies. It has long been thought that at some point in the Chalcolithic or Bronze Age (c. 4500–1500 BC) caprine husbandry was reorganized at the regional level to support the wool industry that was so dear to state finance and elite wealth. Here, we use kill-off patterns and biometrics to test whether caprine husbandry patterns across northern Mesopotamia underwent a regionwide transformation. We synthesize existing data and use Bayesian modeling to estimate average sheep size, male–female ratio, and harvesting patterns targeting older sheep. We confirm previous assessments that document an increase in sheep size in the 4th millennium BC. We find no pattern in male–female ratios. Diachronic kill-off data from across the region show subtle and local shifts in the slaughter of older caprines. While ambiguities in the data persist, there is no evidence of a dramatic shift toward intensive wool production at the regional level

Models for our University's development, recognising its individual socio-economic setting

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented October 1978We note some salient aspects of the society surrounding the University. There are some changes in this society that are almost inexorable. These changes are so important that, if the University wants to play a constructive part in them while promoting those of its present features that are desirable, it will have to plan for altering its character significantly. When we look elsewhere for existing university models which could guide us, we find little that is helpful. We propose instead a basic outlook: Wits wishes to participate in the future of S.A., rather than be dragged through it. This outlook allows us to formulate some aims for, and consider some constraints on, the University, in terms of which we develop some broad features for the future structure of curricula, professional degrees, research orientation and interaction with its community

Towards an antifragility framework in past human–environment dynamics

Scholarship on human–environment interactions tends to fall under two headings: collapse or resilience. While both offer valid explanatory frameworks for human–environment dynamics, both view stress as a net negative that, if unchecked, disrupts systems in equilibrium. Societies either succumb to stress (and collapse) or overcome stress and persist (demonstrate resilience). We re-evaluate the role of stress and advocate for a non-equilibrium approach to the study of past human–environment interactions. We draw inspiration from Nasim Taleb’s concept of ‘antifragility’, which posits a positive role of stress for increasingly complex systems. We apply antifragility as an explanatory framework to pre-Hispanic coastal Peru, where indigenous farmers adapted to the stresses of highly variable El Niño events through a variety of water management systems. Finally, we note that an antifragility approach highlights the beneficial role of stressors, and that avoiding stress altogether makes a system more fragile